Mt. Nebo in Athens, Ohio

Mt. Nebo

Ohio is well known for its ghost towns. Most of them were situated
around the railroad or mining industry. After the company built the
houses for its employees, they suddenly let the mines run dry and the
railroad was not necessary anymore. Sometimes the company left the
little towns with nothing behind. This is the reason some little towns
from Ohio turned into ghost towns. Some of them have a special history,
such as Mt. Nebo.

The town of Mt. Nebo was mainly known for the Spiritualists who used
to live in the area. The area that surrounded Ohio was full of wild
animals and lightly populated by humans. Even if in the early 1800s the
region was not highly inhabited, some people interested in mysticism
lived there. Spiritualism was a mainstream and raising in popularity
during this period of the American History.

The most known man in Mt. Nebo was Jonathon Koons, a devout atheist.
He moved in the district in order to draw attention to the fake
spiritualists that were living in the area but he soon found out that
he believed in the words of a young girl that claimed to be connected
to the other world. She pretended that she would ask questions and that
she received some answers by tapping on the table. History has
demonstrated since then that all these claims of numerous persons were
definitely works of charlatans.

Jonathon Koons remained a believer and soon he began to claim that
spirits were appearing in his home as well and he ordered the members
of his family to strictly follow his actions. The alleged spirits asked
him and his family to build a table in order to use it in communication
with them through ghostly writing. Koons soon discovered that his
oldest son and wife poses the same powers he had. The man pretended
that he was holding a pen in his hand and the spirits would work
through his hand to write their own words.

The spirits also convinced the family to build the Spirit Room, a
cabin for their own private use. Koons had said that all the details of
the room were inspired by the words dictated by the spirits. They would
remain there after the family went to sleep and continued their ghostly
work through the night.

Soon enough, the Koons family was famous all over the country.
People were coming in pilgrimage and the locals become upset by the
flocks of persons that were wandering into the town. The Koons family
farm was burnt down and their children were attacked eventually by
others in the are tired of the supernatural occurneces. After a period
of prosecution, they decided to leave Mt. Nebo and went away to spread
the word about the spirits in other places.

The legend of this family is still remember these days. when the
cabin was still standing visitors would come from all over the world in
order to experience their talents. When in Mt. Nebo, many people
claimed that they felt ghostly hands on their skin, whispers in their
ears and some instruments floating over their heads that were being
played by the spirits. Some of them reported translucent hands that
were writing messages at an extreme fast speed as well.